Marketing Interactions

JANUARY 19, 2020

The average is three to five B2B buyer personas. Which B2B buyer personas, when engaged, will help marketers drive contribution to revenues? Which B2B buyer personas, when engaged, will help marketers drive contribution to revenues? Which B2B Buyer Personas Should You Build? I’ve heard everything from one to fifty-two.

Buyer Personas 121

Buyer Personas Enterprise Management Work Management B2B 121

Marketing Interactions

JANUARY 25, 2022

The beginning of the year is an appropriate time to take a stand about the payoffs of commitment in B2B marketing strategies. The beginning of the year is when a lot of B2B companies look at what they want to accomplish this year as a clean slate. B2B marketers must stop thinking about “campaigns” in response to change.

B2B Marketing 69

B2B Marketing B2B Budget Programs Marketing & Strategy 69

Marketing Interactions

DECEMBER 21, 2021

For some reason, B2B marketing content tends to lean more toward academia than literary license. We think our content must exude professionalism because we sell complex, high-ticket solutions to businesses. Neither of which are emotions seen favorably in B2B—at least not often. Emotion in B2B marketing content is more subtle.

B2B Marketing 80

B2B Marketing B2B Content Paid Search Agency 80

Marketing Interactions

SEPTEMBER 26, 2022

Only 16% of B2B marketers rate their current lead nurturing initiatives as excellent, per the 2022 Lead Nurturing & Acceleration Benchmark Survey. Fifty percent (or more) B2B complex deals end in no decision. Goals – how have your company’s business objectives shifted, and did they impact how you considered solving this problem?

Ideal Customer Profiles 80

Ideal Customer Profiles Buyer Personas Marketing Analytics Tools B2B 80

Marketing Interactions

OCTOBER 5, 2022

When B2B marketers think “buyer,” they’re most often thinking about net-new buyers. This becomes even more important when you consider 73% of B2B tech companies have accelerated existing company revenue goals and 41% of them are decreasing their emphasis on net-new sales to focus on up- and cross-selling.

Ideal Customer Profiles 62

Ideal Customer Profiles B2B Marketing Enterprise Management Work Management 62

Marketing Interactions

SEPTEMBER 9, 2021

But in this context, it’s more about discovery FOR the sales rep, NOT B2B buyers. One of the problems marketing and sales have as B2B buyers’ roles shift is that they start too late in the process. ABM is a Great Construct for B2B Buyer Discovery. A business is an interconnected system. How will they know?

Ideal Customer Profiles 62

Ideal Customer Profiles Account Based Marketing B2B ABM 62

Marketing Interactions

NOVEMBER 29, 2021

To gate or not to gate your B2B content? This is a question that comes up repeatedly for B2B marketers and one we can’t seem to answer definitively. B2B buyers are not buyers until they decide they’re ready to solve the problem by buying a solution. Gartner calls this the biggest challenge in B2B buying. Based on context.

B2B 62

B2B Work Management Marketing Management B2B Thought Leadership 62

Marketing Interactions

JANUARY 9, 2022

B2B content doesn’t create a sum of knowledge as one-off random acts of content. To create influence, your B2B content needs oomph, conviction, and purpose. I’ve written about the need for B2B content to have a point of view. Help B2B Buyers Think & Learn. The post Is Your B2B Content Creating a Sum of Knowledge?

B2B Thought Leadership 62

B2B Thought Leadership B2B Thought Leadership Content 62

Marketing Interactions

FEBRUARY 17, 2020

Content marketing has been an ongoing practice for B2B marketers for more than a decade. But for many buyers, the B2B content they encounter is out of context. B2B Buyers say: Give me messaging I can understand. B2B Marketers say: Our personalization efforts are mostly ineffective. Provide substance over style.

Work Management 96

Work Management Marketing Management B2B Thought Leadership B2B 96

Marketing Interactions

OCTOBER 8, 2020

At a minimum, a B2B buyer is thought to: Understand the problem they’re trying to solve. Unsure about the validity of their business case. They tend to be unsure about the validity of their business case, revising it at least once during their buying process. Be interested in your solution as an option to solve the problem.

Buy 77

Buy B2B Peer-to-peer Work Management 77

Marketing Interactions

JANUARY 27, 2020

In a lot of the conversations I have with B2B marketers, many are overwhelmed when confronted with how to build truly actionable buyer personas. In my previous post, I discussed how to determine the which B2B buyer personas you really need. In my previous post, I discussed how to determine the which B2B buyer personas you really need.

Buyer Personas 69

Buyer Personas Effectiveness B2B B2B Thought Leadership 69

Marketing Interactions

JUNE 20, 2021

B2B messaging is a key component of doing business. Architect B2B Messaging and Stories Around Customers. But those five are the cornerstone questions to answer to create the frameworks for B2B messaging that supports active stories that compel your audience to engage and advance.

B2B 62

B2B Marketing Management Customer Satisfaction B2B Sales 62

Marketing Interactions

MAY 23, 2018

If the trend holds steady—which B2B marketers indicate it will—you’ll create even more content next year. A content operation in B2B acts as a unifying foundation for content strategy and content marketing strategy to bring order to the chaos that generally ensues from ad hoc efforts. You’re creating content—lots of it.

Top of Funnel 67

Top of Funnel Paid Search Agency Companies B2B 67

Marketing Interactions

SEPTEMBER 20, 2018

This is why it’s imperative for B2B tech marketers to shift their focus from buying journey funnels to full-on customer lifecycle management. This singular focus is a double-edged sword in recurring revenue and subscription business models. How easy is it to do business with you over time? How can you help them get more value?

Marketing Funnels 87

Marketing Funnels Top of Funnel B2B Marketing Work Management 87

Marketing Interactions

DECEMBER 29, 2016

Using content for marketing in B2B companies has caught on with a fervor that continues unabated. And, even though only a small percentage of B2B marketers say they are consistently effective with it, most of them will produce more content next year. And now their sights are set on scale for B2B content marketing.

B2B Marketing 81

B2B Marketing Content Marketing B2B Content 81

Marketing Interactions

JUNE 23, 2017

While 89% of B2B marketers have embraced content marketing, only 37% have a documented content marketing strategy, and only 22% say they are extremely successful with their overall approach to content marketing. Yet merely 57% of B2B marketers say they have a deep understanding of the buyer personas included in their strategy.

Buyer Personas 74

Buyer Personas Enterprise Management B2B Marketing Marketing Strategy 74

Marketing Interactions

DECEMBER 26, 2016

Nearly all B2B companies are using content marketing to attract and engage buyers. 28% of B2B marketers describe their organization’s content marketing maturity as sophisticated/mature. 28% of B2B marketers describe their organization’s content marketing maturity as sophisticated/mature. Let’s take a look….

Lead Scoring 72

Lead Scoring Lead Ranking B2B Marketing Planning 72

Marketing Interactions

JANUARY 30, 2017

This happens because B2B marketing is often based on a set of one-off, one-way interactions defined by what we believe the audience should do, whether it’s fill out our form, register for our webinar, share our blog post, follow us on social media, and more actions focused on us. Why would you ever want to give it to them?

B2B Marketing 73

B2B Marketing Marketing Strategy Marketing & Strategy Webinar Metrics 73

Marketing Interactions

SEPTEMBER 30, 2018

Unfortunately, the following recent research findings indicate not a lot has changed since I wrote my book four years ago: 55% of B2B marketers somewhat or strongly agree that they have difficulty getting their message and content in front of their target audience. B2B buyers crave meaning and connection—not just utility or value.

Relevance 58

Relevance B2B Marketing B2B Broadcasting 58

Marketing Interactions

JUNE 23, 2017

In a previous post, I shared a four-step process for creating in-depth B2B buyer personas. 9 Components of a B2B Buyer Persona. As the title suggests, this element gives a narrative snapshot of a day in the life of your B2B buyer persona. This section can also be classified as “Goals” or “Priorities” of the B2B buyer persona.

Buyer Personas 64

Buyer Personas Marketing Strategy Marketing & Strategy B2B Marketing 64

Marketing Interactions

FEBRUARY 15, 2019

But how many B2B marketers can say they truly KNOW their customers? One of the key audiences they’d identified was line of business executives. But they just knew that business leaders would be involved. Many B2B reports are based on inputs from 150 buyers. B2B marketers have also said that lead gen is not the problem.

Conversion 93

Conversion Planning Buyer Personas Dwell 93

Marketing Interactions

MARCH 22, 2022

The way B2B companies qualify leads is based on what we want, rather than letting our buyers guide us. There’s also been a lot of talk and research showing that B2B marketers intend to make lead quality a higher priority than lead quantity. Case in point > BANT. The Case to Banish BANT. First, let’s look at why BANT is ineffective.

Work Management 62

Work Management Marketing Management Ideal Customer Profiles Sales Qualified Leads 62

Marketing Interactions

MAY 21, 2018

The intent to expand content marketing strategy and tactics is in every B2B marketing survey. B2B marketers plan to create more content, spend more on content marketing, increase the number of channels for content distribution, and add more technology to their marketing tech stack. Content serves as the champion of your company.

Cost 69

Cost Content Marketing Automation Services Work Management 69

Marketing Interactions

JULY 25, 2019

Once B2B buyers figured out they could access whatever information they needed to understand a new subject, answer a question, or evaluate a product they no longer needed to talk to a vendor until they decided to invite them to the conversation. At last count by CEB (Gartner), there are nearly 7 people involved in a B2B buying decision.

Relevance 73

Relevance Work Management Marketing Management B2B Sales 73

Marketing Interactions

MAY 21, 2018

With that said, what I see most is that B2B marketers tend to stick to traditional vanity metrics rather than doing the work to rethink what we’re measuring—and why. Measuring individual clicks doesn’t tell enough of the story for a complex B2B buying journey. Email metrics are a great example. Orchestrating progression is a key goal.

Webinar Metrics 74

Webinar Metrics Marketing & Strategy Marketing Strategy Dwell 74

Marketing Interactions

APRIL 21, 2017

As B2B marketers have adopted content marketing, many have found themselves on the hamster wheel of content production. This has led a majority of B2B marketers to admit that their content marketing is not effective—year over year. B2B audiences seek out content in relation to jobs to be done. Content Must Be Hirable.

Content Marketing 60

Content Marketing Planning Marketing Management Paid Search Agency 60

Marketing Interactions

MAY 21, 2018

Text messaging in business is often thought of as purely transactional. They tend to be static, which can result in increasing the gap between your business and your customers. Every business has a need for transactional messages. But SMS messaging can have much more impact as a conversation.

SMS 48

SMS Business Class Ad Frequency 48

Marketing Interactions

OCTOBER 8, 2020

Buyers need sales reps to help them understand how to solve a business problem or take advantage of an opportunity. Rain Group’s Virtual Selling Skills and Challenges Report finds the top five influences on buyer purchase decisions include: Notice that not one of these is “show me your product features.”

Effectiveness 122

Effectiveness Work Management Content Marketing Management 122

Marketing Interactions

APRIL 11, 2019

Channels have been added nearly every year and as consumers (and business buyers) became internet savvy, they wrested control away from the brands who used to decide what information they should have. It didn’t take much to attract a crowd. The Evolution of Content. Fast forward to today and the produced content is staggering in volume.

Peer-to-peer 53

Peer-to-peer Content Enterprise Management Broadcasting 53

Marketing Interactions

MAY 23, 2018

As B2B marketers sprint forward, full of anticipation and excitement to help our companies grow and thrive based on the success of our customers, there are a few content marketing insights, 11 actually, that CMOs wish all marketers knew. I work with a lot of B2B marketing teams that are pressured to do more with less. Tell a Story.

Planning 118

Planning Paid Search Agency Content Marketing Marketing & Strategy 118